1964 Hugo Winner -- Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak

Way Station

Clifford D. Simak

Hugo Award Winner – 1964

Enoch Wallace, the protagonist in Way Station, is a simple man, living on his family’s farm in the southwestern corner of Wisconsin (where Simak was actually born). He doesn’t farm the land, beyond a vegetable garden, but he does subscribe to a number of newspapers and technical journals, which seem to keep him occupied. Every mail day, he walks down the path to the road and meets the mailman, who sometimes delivers other small necessities as well as the mail: a bag of flour, a pound of bacon, a dozen eggs. Enoch lives next to the house he grew up in, in a single- room shed that is kitchen and dining room and bedroom combined. He is also one hundred and twenty-four years old, and the operator of a way station in an interstellar transportation network that teleports aliens of many types along their way up and down this spiral arm of the galaxy.

          He was recruited for this unusual occupation by an alien, whom Enoch named Ulysses (since he was incapable of pronouncing the alien’s actual name). Even though Earth is not a part of the galactic community, the transportation network is expanding in this direction, and Earth is the perfect spot for the next link in the chain. An alien crew reworks the house, installing the transportation equipment in it and modifying the outer surfaces to make them impervious to anything short of atomic blasts, without changing their appearance. A message alerts Enoch when a traveler is coming, what kind of environment he/she/they/other will require, and what kind of hospitality he may be expected to provide. Some of the aliens are gregarious and chatty, some are quiet and uncommunicative, and some are so strange as to make it impossible to render anything like hospitality to them. Some will bring gifts, which are often as strange as the travelers themselves: exotic foods, dangerous machines, incomprehensible curiosities. One traveler even dies suddenly of old age while in Enoch’s company; he has to determine what last rites are appropriate to give the alien (which, thankfully, amounts to “do what you would do for your own people.” He buries the deceased alien in the family plot on the farm, and erects a headstone, inscribed with an epitaph in the alien’s own language.). His longevity is a byproduct of the station; he does not age while inside, and is provided with a medical kit which can handle most illnesses and injuries.

          When asked about the galactic culture, Ulysses tells Enoch that there are a great number of different races, not always agreeing but generally getting along. At least they used to: now things seem to get more out of hand than in the past. Ulysses identifies the problem as having to do with the Talisman: a machine that works with a particular type of being to provide a sense of contact with the Divine. The Talisman was taken by its Custodian randomly through the galaxy, going where the Custodian felt that the influence of the Talisman was needed.  But the Talisman has not had a proper Custodian for a long time, and has lately gone missing.

In his spare time, Enoch studies the progress of the Earth outside his doors. The Earth, it seems, is developing in a bad direction; the newspapers are full of conflict and threats of war. Enoch has acquainted himself with the statistical techniques of Mizar X, but applying them to the situation of Earth leads unescapably to total war. Enoch tries to find some error in his analysis, or a new mathematics that would give a different answer, but is unable to do so. He tries to concoct a way to use the galactic technology to change the hearts and minds of Earthlings, but cannot come up with a viable plan.

          Two Earth people are his special friends: the mailman Winslowe Grant, and Lucy Fisher. The mailman is prone to stop for a chat, if there is no more pressing business to take care of. Thus can Enoch keep abreast of the happenings in his neck of the woods. Lucy is the deaf and dumb daughter of the family on a nearby farm. Although she cannot speak, she does manage to communicate feelings well enough, and is quite pretty. She also may have certain unrecognized talents; Enoch is sure he saw her take a butterfly with a broken wing, and somehow heal it.

          Things come to a head when the intelligence community takes note of the curiosity that Enoch represents, and undertakes to observe him; and, going beyond observing, exhumes the body of the alien for study. The alien’s family is immediately aware of the change, but holds back the information to avoid trouble for the transportation network. When it can no longer be covered up, it fuels the dissension from sections of the galactic community who wanted to expand in other directions, rather than along the spiral arm through Earth. Ulysses is sent to Earth with the news that, if things go badly, they may be directed to shut down this station, giving Enoch the choice of staying on his home planet, or leaving it, forever.

Meanwhile, Lucy escapes mistreatment from her father after he calls her strange abilities “witchcraft”, and she runs to Enoch for sanctuary. Enoch hides her inside the station, where her family cannot get to her, and tells them he hasn’t seen her. When Ulysses arrives, he finds Lucy enraptured by a curiosity given to Enoch, which is now glowing with lights Enoch could never invoke. Lucy eventually goes back to her family, and Enoch makes the intelligence agent (Lewis) understand that the alien body must be replaced in its grave.

While waiting for this to take place, an unannounced traveler appears in the station. At first, Enoch thinks it is there to attack him, but it ignores him and turns to damage the station. Enoch prevents this, and the alien escapes into the countryside. Enoch, aided by Winslowe, Lewis, and Lucy (who is drawn into this confrontation for some reason), tracks the alien down and is forced to kill it. Lucy’s attraction to the fight is explained when she picks up what the alien was carrying, revealing it to be the missing Talisman. The alien was apparently the agent of a group that stole the Talisman, hoping to increase dissention in the galaxy. Further, the Talisman is reacting to Lucy as if she were a Talisman Custodian! Ulysses hypothesizes that her “strangeness” was a result of the qualities that make a Custodian; in the absence of the Talisman, communication except for simple feelings seemed beyond her.

          From this point, everything turns from going wrong to going right. Ulysses is eager to take Lucy and the Talisman on a galactic tour, calming the dissension between the stars. Enoch asks for a small favor first, asking Lewis to convince the Secretary of State to appoint Lucy to a spot at the peace conference, calming the dissention on Earth. Also, Earth needs to begin the gathering of a world conference; one to work out the process of joining the galactic community.  For, after all, how can the galaxy accept a custodian for the Talisman from outside the community?

          Way Station seemed a bit simplistic to me, perhaps due to many years of reading science fiction of increasing complexity.  Or perhaps that was part of the plan: to keep a big secret quiet by hiding it away in a very simple place. But Simak creates an imaginative universe, with concepts similar to some that appear in future works (Asimov’s psycho-history, or Brin’s Five Galaxies alien community).